Allow me to tell you my story of trying to register to vote in New York, and just how utterly stupid our system is.

1/x

Context: I'm an American citizen, been one since birth. Moved from California to New York last year, took 6 months off traveling in between. I don't have a car nor do I ever really drive, license expired while I was traveling abroad.

Was lazy about getting it renewed. Figured I was well past any grace period to renew and happy to settle for just getting a non-driver ID so I could register to vote. Planned to do that in the spring. Then COVID happened, and all DMVs were closed indefinitely

Fast forward to reopening in July, DMV has some hours now. Also found out NYC lets you exchange/renew an out of state licenses for up to 2 years, even if expired. Nice! Scheduled a DMV appt, planned to bring proof of residency/passport/prev license. That's what I needed in CA

Morning of, I double check requirements and see they require a physical copy of my social security card. Which is annoying, because I don't have a physical copy anymore and haven't needed one basically ever. What's that process look like?

Try to make an account on http://ssa.gov  to request a new one. Get through the whole form, only to be met with an error screen and told to call support. We'll call this a "bad automation flow" or "BAF" because it happens again and again.

Representative asks if I have a credit freeze. I say yes... but why does that matter?? She gives an answer roughly equivalent to "I don't make the rules". I locked mine down after Equifax a few years ago. So I try logging in to equifax. Account login doesn't work

Try to recover my account, hit a BAF, call support. They don't know what's up, say I have to mail a bunch of documents to them to get my account back. I'm like fuck that I'll try one of the others. Call transunion, same thing happens with missing login. Do their BAF, call support

Their support is more helpful, but also don't know what's up. They check my SSN and apparently the number they have on the account is different (!?!?!). So their solution is to just... delete the account. lol. Then I can make a new account.

Also freeze is gone now, even though the account had the wrong number. ?!?!.

Back to http://ssa.gov , able to make an account now. Go through the process. But wait - requesting a new card requires a valid drivers license .

...but it doesn't say is has to be valid.

......But it won't let me use my new address. It will only let me send it to my previous address in CA . But I have mail forwarding set up so it should be fine?!?!

Submit application. Immediately get a spam phone call (tinfoil hat with the timing). Need to wait 2 weeks

That was end of July. Nothing doing since. Call SSA again today. They're like "oh yeah mail forwarding may not happen with official gov mail". Great. Who knows where it is, but I can contact local SSA office to try to request locally and provide my new address.

Given number, call local East Village office. Told they can't handle cards, given another number for Manhattan card center. Call card center, it's not the card center. Given a new number for the actual actual card center. Rep says "you're not gonna like my answer"

I have to print, fill out, and physically mail a form with my passport to the local office because they don't have in-person visits yet. ~3 week turnaround. No dropbox service because their landlords won't allow them to set one up.

WHY DO LANDLORDS CONTROL THIS

So now I start that. And mind you, I still have to go through the DMV's process *after* all this.

Will I be able to vote in November? Feeling quite nervous about it now. To be continued...

Sidenote - I'm aware I'm not devoid of responsibility here. I could have been more on top of it. I also know COVID fucks up everything. But it's still ridiculous how much friction there is in what should be considered a critical system. I have the privileged time to sit on hold

The card has arrived. Not doing the other manual process. I can now schedule a DMV appt

Ya boi's a registered voter and legal driver again